The
Rhetoric of Rights:
Parents Have Authority Over Children, but England Has Not Behaved
as a "Natural" Parent

E Pluribus Unum

Understanding the principles of natural law theory can help us
to understand the significance of a metaphor that comes up repeatedly
in revolutionary rhetoric: the image of a mother who has neglected
or abused her child. Proponents of natural law agreed that some
forms of authority were inherently natural, and the most frequently
cited example is the "natural" power that a parent exercises
over a child. Many British and Americans would have been familar
with this concept not only through the works of Englightenment
thinkers but also because it was one of the central tenets of
the Puritan belief.

The same metaphor had also been used for generations of monarchists
to defend the absolute authority of the king, for, as James I
put it in a 1610 speech to parliament, "Kings are also compared
to fathers of families: for a king is truly parens patriae
[parent of the country], the politic father of his people."
James, recognized then and now as a strong defender of the rights
of kings, developed the family metaphor at greater length in his
"Trew
Laws of Free Monarchies" when he wrote:

By the Law of Nature the King becomes a naturall Father to
all his Lieges at his Coronation: And as the Father of his fatherly
duty is bound to care for the nourishing, education, and vertuous
gouernment of his children; euen so is the king bound to care
for all his subiects. As all the toile and paine that the father
can take for his children, will be thought light and well bestowed
by him, so that the effect thereof redound to their profite
and weale; so ought the Prince to doe towards his people. As
the kindly father ought to foresee all inconuenients and dangers
that may arise towards his children, and though with the hazard
of his owne person presse to preuent the same; so ought the
King towards his people. As the fathers wrath and correction
vpon any of his children that offendeth, ought to be by a fatherly
chastisement seasoned with pitie, as long as there is any hope
of amendment in them; so ought the King towards any of his Lieges
that offend in that measure. And shortly, as the Fathers chiefe
ioy ought to be in procuring his childrens welfare, reioycing
at their weale, sorrowing and pitying at their euill, to hazard
for their safetie, trauellfor their rest, wake for their sleepe;
and in a word, to thinke that his earthly felicitie and life
standeth and liueth more in them, nor in himselfe; so ought
a good Prince thinke of his people.

As to the other branch of this mutuall and reciprock band,
is the duety and alleageance that the Lieges owe to their King:
the ground whereof, I take out of the words of Samuel, cited
by Gods Spirit, when God had giuen him commandement to heare
the peoples voice in choosing and annointing them a King.

This very familiar concept was put into use by the English and
by loyalist Americans to defend the right of the mother-country
to demand obedience from its "child." Those on the other
side of the debate used the same metaphor to suggest that if England
was the mother country, then it had behaved in an unnatural fashion
and the child needed to be protected from it's savagery. In "Common
Sense," Tom Paine directly addresses the issue:

But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more
shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young,
nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion,
if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true,
or only partly so, and the phrase parent or mother country hath
been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with
a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous
weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent
country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for
the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every
part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces
of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is
so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the
first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.

This argument would not have made any difference
to an earlier believer in the absolute right of Kings such as
James I, who insisted:

I pray you what duetie his children owe to [their
king/father], & whether vpon any pretext whatsoeuer, it
wil not be thought monstrous and vnnaturall to his sons, to
rise vp against him, to control him at their appetite, and when
they thinke good to sley him, or cut him off, and adopt to themselues
any other they please in his roome: Or can any presence of wickednes
or rigor on his part be a iust excuse for his children to put
hand into him? And although wee see by the course of nature,
that loue vseth to descend more then to ascend, in case it were
trew, that the father hated and wronged the children neuer so
much, will any man, endued with the least sponke of reason,
thinke it lawfull for them to meet him with the line? Yea, suppose
the father were furiously following his sonnes with a drawen
sword, is it lawfull for them to turne and strike againe, or
make any resistance but by flight? I thinke surely, if there
were no more but the example of bruit beasts & unreasonable
creatures, it may serue well enough to qualifie and proue this
my argument. We reade often the pietie that the Storkes haue
to their olde and decayed parents: And generally wee know, that
there are many sorts of beasts and fowles, that with violence
and many bloody strokes will beat and banish their yong ones
from them, how soone they perceive them to be able to fend themselves;
but wee neuer read or heard of any resistance on their part,
except among the vipers; which prooues such persons, as ought
to be reasonable creatures, and yet unnaturally follow this
example, to be endued with their viperous nature.

But times and conditions had changed, and of course Paine and
his fellow patriots are on a different side of the argument, so
that they go on to turn the parent-child metaphor against the
English, arguing that "savage" or "unnatural"
behavior of Britain towards America obliges American parents to
protect the lives and futures of their own children by eliminating
the source of the danger. Thus Paine argues:

The authority of Great-Britain over this continent, is a form
of government, which sooner or later must have an end: And a
serious mind can draw no true pleasure by looking forward, under
the painful and positive conviction, that what he calls "the
present constitution" is merely temporary. As parents,
we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently
lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity:
And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next
generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise
we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line
of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand,
and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence
will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices
conceal from our sight.

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel,
against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted
one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with
as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old,
as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought
was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well!
give me peace in my day." Not a man lives on the continent
but fully believes that a separation must some time or other
finally take place, and a generous parent should have said,
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my
child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well
applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not a place
upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote
from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but
to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper
and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs
the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear
of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till
that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror;
for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine,
the coal can never expire.

The duty of parents to protect and care for their children forms
the basis for particularly powerful -- and emotional -- arguments
when writers call upon mothers and fathers (and husbands and wives)
to mourn the children and spouses who have been slain by the British.
Consider the force of Paine's appeal to peace-minded Americans
when he cries out in "Common Sense":

But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then
I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath you property been destroyed
before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a
bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or
a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched
survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those
who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the
murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father,
friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in
life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

Understandably, this kind of appeal to the sentiments and responsibilities
of parents and family members is a particularly strong feature
of speeches and writing commemorating events such as the Boston
Massacre.

If you see any of the following references or terms in a text
from the revolutionary era, consider whether the author is using
this argument: mother, mother country, parent, child, unnatural,
savage, brutes, brutish.